Slapstick performance and trick cinematography dominated early global cinema. People climb into boxes and are tossed around; they jerry-rig all manner of dwellings and conveyances. But what did such visual gags look like in films made in Shanghai, as opposed to Los Angeles?
This conversation between Henry Jenkins, a media scholar who works primarily on American popular culture, and Christopher Rea, Associate Professor at UBC Asian Studies, will explore comic convergences on the silver screen, focusing on filmmakers who embraced a vaudevillian aesthetic of visceral comedy and variety entertainment.
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